


not like megatron

by iron_spider



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Spider-Man: Far From Home Compliant, Precious Peter Parker, Protective Peter Parker, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25825540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iron_spider/pseuds/iron_spider
Summary: “Hi! This is Peter Parker, I can’t get to the phone right now, so leave a message and I’ll call you back later! Hopefully not too much later, but don’t get your hopes up!”Tony knows that message by heart. He’s heard it hundreds of times, in a greyer world, and it sends shivers down his spine as he climbs into the car.He doesn’t think about that place. That half-world. No way, that’s done, that’s over, that’s history.“Hey, kid, don’t you know it’s bad etiquette to go and disappear on your birthday? Not allowed, really, really bad vibes from the universe. What’s going on with your suit? I wasn’t watching. Nope. Just got an alert. What’s going on? Uh, call me back.” He clears his throat and hangs up like a moron, driving out into the street.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 31
Kudos: 462





	not like megatron

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday to precious Peter Parker! I've done a million versions of this fic lmfao but I hope you still like it.

Tony watches as Peter’s location blips right off the map. 

Disappear, click, gone. There one moment and nothing the next. Like a thief in the night.

Tony watches him now, on every big mission, on almost every patrol, unless he’s chastised and told not to. Peter claims Tony’s heart problems, claims his own privacy, claims every rule in the book and then some, but Tony clicks on most of the time, anyway. Like a real live Friday, ready to pop in if Peter needs an assist. He leaves it up in the background while he’s coloring with Morgan, he keeps it on his tablet while they’re watching movies. Tony’s retired now but that doesn’t mean he has to give up his hovering when it comes to the kid—in fact, he’s leaned into it, accepted it, welcomed it. He feels better when he knows where Peter is, what the hell he’s doing. 

He lost him once. That really messed up his brain, and it keeps him extra annoying in his attempts to avoid that same scenario. No more dead Peter. No more injured Peter. That’s it. Them’s the rules.

“Friday, refresh Karen’s feed, huh?” Tony asks, sitting up a little straighter. 

Today is the kid’s birthday, and they only got back from the Parker apartment about an hour ago. They filled that place up with superheroes and balloons and colorful confetti, and Tony’s face still hurts from smiling so hard. Peter’s happiness is catching and everyone attending felt it and fed into it. Tony’s recovery has been long and arduous but Peter has been an essential part of it. Peter, by his bedside, reading an article about rescue dogs. Peter, doing a one-man interpretive dance illustrating his latest Spidey encounter. Peter, holding his hand and being wise beyond his years, with gentle encouragement and his calming presence.

Tony loves the kid. So what? So what if he got him more than one gift for his big day? So what if he’s already completely funded his college experience, despite May’s pushback? So what if he’d do anything for him? So what? Tony knows he’s got two kids despite their bloodlines, and it’s easier to let that love consume him now. Now that the world has been turned inside out and shaken off and twisted up and made new again. There’s no point in hiding it, or anything else. No point in being what he made himself all those years ago, when he was afraid of the world looking at him and not liking what they saw. Now he just is what he is. 

And Peter’s part of it. Just like Pepper and Rhodey and Happy and Morgan. Part of his family.

So Tony was a little confused that Peter still wanted to go out patrolling after his party, which entailed tons of dancing and yelling and Thor nearly putting Peter through the ceiling in a fit of overzealousness. Tony is back at his city apartment and he’s exhausted, Morgan’s already asleep, and Pepper is putting the final touches on a few new proposals before she hits the hay, too.

But now it’s not just a simple patrol. Now it’s—

“Friday, did you refresh it?” Tony asks, putting aside his laptop and crossing his arms over his chest. “C’mon, pick up the pace, let’s go.”

“I did refresh it, Boss.”

Tony stares at the map, his blood pressure rising, his face burning with emotion. But nothing changes. Peter’s little dot doesn’t reappear. What the hell?

He tries to squash a panic attack. Peter’s done dumb shit plenty of times that resulted in Tony rushing out of the house to find him, but he was almost always fine. Well, usually fine. A lot of that happened pre-the end of the world, and now things are more high stakes. No more dead Peter. No more injured Peter. Tony can’t do much anymore, but he’ll still do all he can.

He sighs and picks up his earpiece, shoving it into his ear as he gets up and heads for the door. Peter was only a couple blocks away, so it’s not too crazy if he goes out to look. Maybe a little crazy. Maybe a little bit over the top. But he’s been more dramatic before. He’ll never forget the time when he went all the way the hell out to Staten Island when Peter wasn’t answering.

“Friday, put a call through to the kid, please,” Tony says. “ _The_ kid, don’t play with me and call that record store in Queens again.”

“Calling,” she says, and he figures if she could laugh, she would be.

By the time he makes it to the garage, the phone stops ringing and Peter’s answering machine takes over.

“ _Hi! This is Peter Parker, I can’t get to the phone right now, so leave a message and I’ll call you back later! Hopefully not too much later, but don’t get your hopes up!_ ”

Tony knows that message by heart. He’s heard it hundreds of times, in a greyer world, and it sends shivers down his spine as he climbs into the car.

He doesn’t think about that place. That half-world. No way, that’s done, that’s over, that’s history. 

“Hey, kid, don’t you know it’s bad etiquette to go and disappear on your birthday? Not allowed, really, really bad vibes from the universe. What’s going on with your suit? I wasn’t watching. Nope. Just got an alert. What’s going on? Uh, call me back.” He clears his throat and hangs up like a moron, driving out into the street. 

Friday puts a HUD on the windshield and Peter’s marker doesn’t reappear. Tony’s heart rate rises with every second that the marker stays gone, and maybe he shouldn’t have been watching, maybe he’s overreacting. 

_He knows that’s wrong. He should always be paying attention. When he’s not, people get hurt. And what are the rules?_

His mind takes him places he doesn't want to go—back to the world the way it was before. Back to when Morgan would ask who the boy in the pictures is. When Tony would have to say _was._ Past tense. Because he isn’t here anymore.

_He’s here now he’s back that’s over that’s done—_

Tony remembers Peter’s happiness at his party earlier. He tries to focus on that. 

He gets to the last known location and parallel parks in front of an apartment building. It looks like there are a bunch of street lights out over here, and not a lot of lights on in the windows. It’s nearly midnight but it’s still New York, and there are plenty of people on the street, going about their business and barely noticing him, despite who he is, despite the fact that there’s a billboard of him within eyesight over the baseball park. 

It’s a bad picture, anyway.

“Boss,” Friday says in his ear, as soon as Tony gets out of the car. “Peter’s location has resurfaced.”

“Uh, what, where?” Tony says, spinning around on the sidewalk, heart in his throat.

“Right—incoming call from Peter Parker.”

“Let it _through_ , Friday, Jesus—”

“Tony?” Peter’s voice cuts in.

Tony wilts back against the passenger side of the car when he hears it. “Hey, hey,” he says, breathing hard through his mouth. “I’m not out looking for you or anything. Nothing like that.”

“Oh God,” Peter says. “No, I’m—wait, were you watching? I didn’t listen to your message yet, I just saw the missed call when Karen rebooted.”

Too many things to think about. “Uh—watching, maybe, but uh—Karen rebooted, let’s start there—wait, wait, where are you, are you in the same place you were about ten minutes ago?”

“Yeah, well, close—I’m on top of the—wait, is that you? You’re right below me. I see you.” 

“Oh, you’re tracking me, huh?” Tony asks, glancing up, and his heart finally settles when he sees Peter approach the edge of the building. “Hypocrite. Hypocritical.”

“Tracking your car,” Peter says, and he clears his throat. “Want me to come down there or—”

“I’m coming up,” Tony says, immediately rushing up the stairs when someone opens the main door to the apartments. “Don’t hang up,” he says, as he maneuvers through the building and up towards the roof. There aren’t any lights on in here either. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“Uh, relatively—”

“Relatively?” Tony nearly yells.

“Yeah, like, mostly—”

“Jesus Christ,” Tony says. “Remember that it’s your birthday? And you didn’t need to go out on patrol? And then scare me to death blipping out?” He’s stomping up the stairs, huffing and puffing like a goddamn animal.

“I mean. Maybe. I wanted to! Blipping out?”

“Gimme a second, I’m—Jesus—”

“Don’t die. Don’t die on me on my birthday.”

Tony scoffs, shaking his head in the empty, dark stairwell. “Stop.”

“Stopping.”

“No, keep talking.”

“You really sound like you’re gonna pass out.”

“Not to chastise me, I’m the chastiser, I am the one who chastises—”

Peter laughs at him, and then he makes a sound like he’s in pain, and Tony moves faster without even thinking about it.

“Okay, I swear I’m fine—I could have just swung down there—”

Tony finally reaches the door to the roof and he pushes it open, reaching up to end the call as soon as he lays eyes on Peter. Peter walks over to him and pulls his mask off, and even in the darkness Tony can see his suit is black and charred in places.

“What the hell happened?” Tony asks, trying to catch his breath. He reaches out and grips Peter’s shoulders. “Did you set yourself on fire? Rewind. Pretend we didn’t talk.”

Peter laughs a little bit. “Uh. Okay. Uh. I was just patrolling, you know, I helped a lady with her car and then I stopped these dudes from fighting in the street and then someone said they heard a weird noise in this back alley a few over from here, and as soon as I got over there I saw it was a transformer—not like, Megatron—”

“Not my first thought,” Tony says, shaking his head.

“Fine—”

“I’m an adult.”

“Okay, okay, well, it was a real life transformer and I didn’t have time to investigate because it blew up. And it must have done something to the suit when it threw me backwards because everything went completely black and shut down and I didn’t even have Karen or anything. So I was like...swinging blind and I wound up on this roof and I didn’t wanna like, try to do anything when I couldn’t see and obviously I wasn’t coming out of the suit because I’m just me without the suit—not that that’s nothing, I’ve learned that lesson, no...lecture needed—but I’m also just wearing my boxers under here and that wouldn’t have helped anybody—”

Tony snorts, hanging his head.

“But then it all came back online and I saw your call, and the cops and some power guys are over there now, so,” Peter says, in a rush of breath. “Nobody’s hurt. I checked.” He nods. He’s got a bit of a bruise on his forehead, but he looks alright, otherwise.

“But you’re fine?” Tony asks, gripping his shoulders tighter. “You feel alright? No screws loose in the old noggin?”

Peter shrugs and lets out a big sigh. “I mean, you never know. I lose brain cells every day. So do you. So does everybody.”

Tony narrows his eyes and lets go of him. “Speak for yourself, short stuff. I am saving my brain cells, keeping them under wraps. And Morgan’s got plenty. She’s _only_ gaining.”

Peter grins and Tony grins too and once again, he’s back in the memory of the party earlier. Peter should only ever be happy and that’s just about the heart of it. He’s too good. He’s one of the nicest, most genuine people Tony has ever met. Why the hell does the kid insist on threatening his own happiness? There are plenty of heroes. He never gives himself a break. They’re still coming off one of the worst things to ever happen in the history of the goddamn word, and they were affected. Severely affected, front row seats, platinum tickets. And Peter still hasn’t learned the meaning of a day off, even on a day that’s supposed to belong to him. 

Tony reaches up and wipes a smudge off Peter’s chin. “How long you gonna do this, huh? Every birthday, every year? Till you’re in adult diapers?”

“Are you in adult diapers?”

“You didn’t just ask me that.”

“You asked _me_.”

Tony stares at him. Peter grins again. 

“For real, Pete. I mean, responsibility, yeah, sure, I know, I get it, I’ve been afflicted too—” And he cuts himself off because every day, it’s hard. Knowing he could be helping and he’s not. He doesn’t know if he’ll come back from his self-imposed retirement. He doesn’t know if he’s strong enough. But there’s still that itch to get back out there. To get into a suit again.

“My birthday isn't important if someone’s out here needing help and I don’t help them,” Peter says, shifting his mouth to the side a bit and widening his eyes. Like it’s something Tony should know, like it’s something he does know and Peter knows he knows. “I just have to...keep an eye out, do a little bit of looking. Make sure everything’s okay. You know.”

Tony sighs. “I do know,” he says, exasperated and proud at the same time. “How long were you planning on staying out? You’re practically smoking, kid, you’re still all—charred up from the damn explosion.”

“I’m fine,” Peter says, shaking his head. “Like. Maybe a little dizzy and maybe I hit my head, but I do that all the time. I do that when I’m not Spider-Man. I do that in school.”

Tony sighs again and reminds himself that Peter is a losing battle. He can help the kid but he can’t stop him. He’ll be on his death bed at ninety years old trying to stop him. “How about I follow you around for a half hour or so and then take you home?” Tony asks. “Then I can steal some of that leftover cake you’ve got in the fridge.”

“Okay,” Peter says, beaming at him. “And take the cupcakes too because May keeps claiming she’s gonna eat them all and get fat.”

Tony snorts, throwing an arm around his shoulders and leading him over to the door. “Yes,” he says. “I’ll do that. The Starks can get fat instead.”

Peter laughs, and Tony tugs him close as they walk. He prays for a ton more birthdays for the kid. A hundred. More. There’s no repaying his kindness or his genuine love and care for the world around him. 

But that’s not gonna stop Tony from trying.


End file.
